“Kildeer” Gibbs and Omar Khadr Trial

(9AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

My contention is that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is doing the Kildeer maneuver, like the bird who cries to draw you away from its nest,  as a distraction from what is going on with the trial of Omar Khadr, who has been held in U.S. custody as an enemy combatant for 8 years and since he was only 15 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O…

Since Khadr was not yet of legal age when he was nearly killed then revived by the U.S. military, then used as part of Bush and Cheney’s sadistic little game to “prove” that this country needed to invade Iraq on false pretenses, it looks really awkward, not to mention immoral, to be trying the prisoner with the idea of permanent incarceration or the death penalty. (if the prosecution is to be believed, the maximum penalty in this case is life imprisonment)  Even more so that he was born in Canada.

Hence Kildeer Gibb’s dig about not being satisfied until we had Canadian healthcare.  Obviously we have the finest healthcare in the world because we can revive almost indefinitely people who have nearly been tortured to death.

Because I checked the usual suspects on the kick a hippie sh*t stirring list, the OFA/DNC paid campaigner and Beltway insider types, the ones who like to use the word “firebaggers,”   and they’re all ignoring this like it’s his turn.  Like they radioed in the strike coordinates to the WH @ PressSec office.

Or they are going to actually proxy bomb Iran next.  But then I remembered the game right wing people like to play called “you’re insincere in your concerns.”

Maybe Kildeer Gibbs could diss the Canadians’ troops next and they could pull out of Afghanistan like the Dutch did.

http://www.aolnews.com/world/a…

Aug 3 2010

“This is the start,” an Afghan political analyst, Haroon Mir, told Agence France-Presse. “It’s a chain — the Dutch start to withdraw, followed by the Canadians, then the British by 2014. In the middle I think we will see a number of other NATO members… setting a timetable to leave.”

The Dutch will be replaced by U.S. and Australian, Slovak and Singaporean soldiers.

Canadian press, this am:

Montreal Gazette Aug 12, 2010

Khadr trial to hear first arguments

http://www.montrealgazette.com…

More than eight years after U.S. forces captured a 15-year-old Omar Khadr on an Afghan battlefield, prosecution and defence lawyers present their opening arguments today in his war crimes trial -the first such case proceeding under the Obama administration.

Seven U.S. military officers will sit in judgment of the Canadian-born terror suspect after the military judge in the case yesterday excused eight others from the initial jury pool, acting on requests and challenges from either the defence or prosecution.

Postmedia News has also learned that the defence has been seeking to present two Canadian government officials as defence witnesses – a request likely to rankle the Conservative government, which has resisted calls from human- rights and other activist groups calling for Khadr’s immediate repatriation.

The officials – Sabine Nolke and Suneeta Millington – have over the years been dispatched to visit Khadr at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of the Canadian government’s bid to monitor his confinement conditions and other aspects of his treatment.  

Omar Khadr is so far intending on being tried in absentia because he considers the entire proceedings a sham and has fired his U.S. civilian lawyers. He has a Pentagon appointed attorney.

From an earlier article, same paper:

Aug 6, 2010

Prosecutors dismiss photos of Khadr as proof of innocence

http://www.canada.com/news/Pro…

Battlefield pictures that purportedly show Khadr “buried” under rubble – and therefore unable to have thrown the hand grenade that fatally wounded a U.S. serviceman – are wide open to interpretation, according to one source familiar with the prosecution case.

“When it comes to the murder charge, there . . . is (the) photo showing he is buried in the rubble at the time, and (a) soldier who says that, when (he) first found Omar, he was buried in the rubble,” said Nate Whitling, one of Khadr’s two Canadian lawyers.

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No witnesses actually saw Khadr toss the grenade that killed Special Forces Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer, who died from his wounds after being evacuated from the battle scene.

Army Col. Patrick Parrish, the case judge, will rule at the end of the final hearing on whether numerous statements Khadr made to intelligence and law enforcement officers admitting guilt are admissible, or whether they were obtained, as the defence has argued, subsequent to harsh treatment.  

More on another member of the Khadr family, his older brother, Abdullah Khadr:

August 4, 2010

http://www.canada.com/news/Abd…

TORONTO – An Ontario court on Wednesday quashed a bid to extradite Abdullah Khadr to the U.S. on terrorism charges following a lengthy legal battle between the federal government and one of Canada’s most controversial families. Khadr, 29, who has been held for the past five years at a Toronto detention centre, was immediately released following the decision by Superior Court Justice Christopher Speyer.

Khadr is the eldest son of Ahmed Said Khadr, an al-Qaida financier who was killed by Pakistan forces in a shootout near the Afghanistan border in 2003. His family had immigrated to Canada in 1977.

Meanwhile, the U.S. case against Abdullah Khadr was based on a number of statements he made to the FBI and RCMP about procuring weapons for al-Qaida and allegedly being involved in an assassination plot against the prime minister of Pakistan. He said those confessions were made while he was detained and tortured in Pakistan in 2005.

During his extradition hearing last fall, Khadr told a Toronto court that authorities had also threatened violence against his family.

Abdullah’s father, Ahmed Said Khadr,  was born in Egypt and moved to Canada in 1977. (another paragraph uses 1975)  His mother was Palestinian, and he moved the family to Pakistan in 1998.   http://www.canada.com/news/Kha…

He was a religious fundamentalist zealot, and an associate of Osama Bin Laden.

Abdullah Khadr, his son,  was arrested in 2004, in Pakistan.  The United States had a half million dollar bounty out on him.  He was held for 14 months in Pakistan without charges being filed and denied a lawyer for the first 3 months.   He was interrogated by Pakistani, Canadian, and U. S. officials.

In 2006, Abdullah Khadr was indicted in Massachusetts on conspiracy to kill American soldiers, use weapons of mass destruction, and conspiracy to possess destructive devices to commit violent crimes.

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So much has changed from the original timeline and story of how the various #2 and #3 Al Qaeda aides were captured, tortured, “confessed,”  and then held without trial, and how some US military legal counsels resigned rather than break the law they swore to uphold, which said they could not participate in a phony Bush era military tribunal in good conscience, and how Bush and Cheney were authorizing performing human experimentation on them,  that of course the United States would be hoping that the current trial is not publicized.

In March of this year 2010, the United State government finally officially recanted almost all claims terrorism caused by Abu Zubaydah, who was supposedly Bin Laden’s #2 or #3 top aide who planned the 9/11 attacks.

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Tortured Detainee Zubaydah, Used as a Lab Rat by Our Government  March 30,2010

From the Truthout link in that story:

But court documents unclassified last weekend debunk Thiessen’s assertions as well as those made by, among others, George W. Bush, who said Zubaydah was one of al-Qaeda’s “top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.”



For the first time, the government now officially admits that Zubaydah did not have “any direct role in or advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” and was neither a “member” of al-Qaeda nor “formally” identified with the terrorist organization.

Besides being the victim of disgusting behavior by our government, who tortured phony confessions out of him in 2002 because Dick Cheney personally approved his waterboarding, Zubaydah was supposedly a major figure in the “Millenium Plot”  which was supposed to be a series of attacks on Israel and the US with Osama Bin Laden.  “Reporter” Judy Miller of the New York Times wrote this up.  (see my comment in the diary link, partially quoted below)

Old version of history, 9/11 timeline no longer accurate

Nov 30 1999 heading.  Jordan thwarts Al Queda Connected Millenium Plot  



Jordanian officials successfully uncover an al-Qaeda plot to blow up the Radisson Hotel in Amman, Jordan, and other sites on January 1, 2000. [PBS FRONTLINE, 10/3/2002] The Jordanian government intercepts a call between al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida and a suspected Jordanian terrorist named Abu Hoshar. Zubaida says, “The training is over.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 1/15/2001] Zubaida also says, “The grooms are ready for the big wedding.” [SEATTLE TIMES, 6/23/2002] This call reflects an extremely poor code system, because the FBI had already determined in the wake of the 1998 US embassy bombings that “wedding” was the al-Qaeda code word for bomb. [MILLER, STONE, AND MITCHELL, 2002, PP. 214] Furthermore, it appears al-Qaeda fails to later change the system, because the code-name for the 9/11 attack is also “The Big Wedding.” [CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 9/5/2002] Jordan arrests Hoshar while he’s still on the phone talking to Zubaida. In the next few days, 27 other suspects are charged. A Jordanian military court will initially convict 22 of them for participating in planned attacks, sentencing six of them to death, although there will be numerous appeals (see April 2000 and After). In addition to bombing the Radisson Hotel around the start of the millennium, the plan calls for suicide bombings on two border crossings with Israel and a Christian baptism site. Further attacks in Jordan are planned for later. The plotters had already stockpiled the equivalent of 16 tons of TNT, enough to flatten “entire neighborhoods.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 1/15/2001] Key alleged plotters include:

Raed Hijazi, a US citizen who is part of a Boston al-Qaeda cell (see June 1995-Early 1999). He will be arrested and convicted in late 2000 (see September 2000 and October 2000). [NEW YORK TIMES, 1/15/2001]

Khalid Deek, who is also a US citizen and part of an Anaheim, California al-Qaeda cell. He will be arrested in Pakistan and deported to Jordan, but strangely he will released without going to trial.

Note also, that Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in conjunction with Pakistani intelligence services on March 28, 2002.  And like Omar Khadr, he was severely shot up and wounded when he began his voyage thru the torture gulags.

______________________

Look at the the timeline and names below.  

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1999   “Millenium Plot” was planned for New Year January 2000.  Historical sites popular with tourists in Jordan, the Los Angeles Airport, and the port of Aden, Yemen were supposed to be the site of terrorist attacks.  The first two attacks were stopped, the third was self destructive when a boat sank before bombing the US ship The Sullivans in Yemen.  Subsequent events have shown the attacks were not plotted together.  

The “Millenium Plot” was cited by then Counter terrorism Chief Richard Clarke as a reason to pursue al Qaeda and Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Clarke gave the Bush administration many warnings about this in 2001.  Clarke gave a warning via Daily Briefing memo to President Bush on Aug 6, 2001.

The Bush administration attempted to discredit him. http://dir.salon.com/story/opi…

Richard Clarke would leave the Bush administration in 2003, write a book in 2004, and testify before the 9/11 Commission.

1999, December 12, Jordan arrests some “Millenium Plot” terror cell plotters allegedly linked to Al Qaeda

3/5/2000 “Trainees in Terror”  AP story says “Mohammed Abu Zubayda” is a member of Bin Laden’s inner circle and according to a “senior Middle East security official” is directing a Jordanian terrorist cell from Pakistan.   Story quotes L. Paul Bremer, as former US State Dept counter terrorism expert,  as saying a Jordanian American named Khalil Deek who lives in Pakistan is “certainly one of of Bin Laden’s top deputies.”

Jordanian officials arrest 13 alleged plotters and Deek.

2000  aprox ? Abu Zubaydah is convicted in absentia and sentenced to death by a Jordanian tribunal of plotting to bomb sites in Jordan.

2000  October 12 –  the US Navy ship USS Cole was bombed in Yemen, killing 17 and wounding 39.  Initially the attack was blamed on al Qaeda.  In 2007, a Federal US Judge rules that the government of Sudan was liable, because relatives of the victims sued, claiming al Qaeda had to have had help from the Sudanese government.  By June 30, 2008, Brig Gen Thomas Hartman said charges are being sworn in the Cole bombing against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian citizen of Yemeni ancestry, currently at Guantanamo since 2006.   Before, on Sept 29 2004, a Yemeni judge had sentenced Abd al Rahim al Nashiri  and Jamal al Badawi to death for the Cole bombing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U…

2001 September –  L Paul Bremer in 2001 was in private business as CEO of Marsh Crisis Consulting, a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Co Inc.  They had offices in the WTC Towers on Sept 11, 2001, some employees were killed.  

According to wikipedia, 3 hours after the planes hit, Bremer appeared on a televised interview and blamed Osama Bin Laden for the attack.

20 months later post 9/11,  L Paul Bremer was appointed the Head of the “Coalition Provisional Authority” to oversee reconstruction in Iraq by President Bush and oversaw it from May 2003 to June 2004 after the US invaded Iraq.

2001 July 4   Judith Miller and Laura Mansnerus in the NY Times are writing about the Millenium Bomb Plot again.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07…

An Algerian named Ahmed Ressam convicted of trying to bomb Los Angeles, said that he trained in Afghanistan in 1998 and returned to Canada. He said in a plea bargain, through an interpreter, that the camps were run by “Abu Zubaida”  the nom du guerre of a Palestinian who is Bin Laden’s lieutenant.

2002 March 23 –   Abu Zubaydah shot, severely wounded, and arrested in Pakistan. Medical doctors are sent from the US to save him. Zubaydah eventually is tortured and sent Guantanamo Bay US Prison in Cuba

Before and after this, all MSM newsmedia references to Zubaydah refer to him as the “mastermind” or “planner” of not only the Millenium 1999 plot in Jordan but of 9/11 as bin Laden’s 2nd in command, running terrorist training camps and operating out of Pakistan.  For an example, see this list of links here: http://www.historycommons.org/…

2002  –     teenaged Omar Khadr is bombed, shot, survives, and is arrested in Afghanistan, taken in US custody

2002  Sept 8  –  Judith Miller and Michael Gordon write in the NYTimes that Saddam Hussein is buying Nuclear

bomb components, aluminum tubes used in centrifuges, and that an Iraqi defector said Hussein was working on chemical weapons, Saddam Hussein was also possessing biological weapons of gas gangrene, anthrax, and botulinum toxin. A possible supply of smallpox was also not ruled out. “US govt. officials” and the “US administration” were quoted, but not by name.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09… It is Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, however, that is at the top of the         administration’s list of worries and forms a key part of its case for a military campaign to overthrow Mr. Hussein.

                         

2003  –     Ahmed Said Khadr,  Omar’s father, is shot and killed by Pakistan

2003 March 19   –    President George W Bush announces beginning of Iraq War to the nation

2004 –       Abdullah Khadr, Omar’s brother, arrested in Pakistan, claims he was tortured in 2005

2004 January  –  Sec of State Colin Powell admits there was no proof that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda linked. Powell had appeared before the United Nations before the Iraq invasion, arguing that Saddam Hussein was so likely to have Weapons of Mass destruction and biological warfare components that stopping him by invading Iraq was a world priority.

2005 August 1  –   James Moore writes in the Huffington Post “That Awful Power: How Judy Miller Screwed Us All” that:

Judith Miller was getting almost all her information about weapons of mass destruction from Ahmed Chalabi, the exiled leader of the US backed “Iraqi National Congress,” and that Chalabi was wrong. Miller had also agreed to “terms of accreditation” and to allow her work to be pre edited by the military.  Chalabi was also given an estimated $100 million dollars by the Pentagon to promote the the cause of invading Iraq.

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

In spite of this information, the country re elects George W Bush to a second Presidential term in November 2006.

2008  – Bush admitted that Iraq war was his biggest regret, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11

2010 June 2 –  Bush admitted Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 “mastermind,”  was waterboarded  http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

August 2010 –  The trial of Omar Khadr, military prisoner of war,  now a young adult, begins in Guantanamo.  The Main stream media in the United States and much of the blogosphere is successfully distracted by the White House spokesperson’s antics the day before, and the ongoing dramatical renditioning of the truth about what the common people actually want, which is accountability and the real story, not a continued cover up of how the government lied to get whatever it wanted to go to war(s).

If “Abu Zubaydah” (who is still in Guantanamo with severe brain damage, see his US attorney Brent Mickum’s story here in The Guardian, from this March, The Truth About Abu Zubaydah http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm…   ) was no longer really Al Qaeda mastermind #2 or #3, as now has been known and admitted to by our own government since March, the entire house of cards of linked confessions,  connecting everyone else in the chain to Bin Laden collapses.  Or at least is put at serious doubt, and needs revising.

Would your government attempt to distract you in any August ?